Headteachers in paintings by students

Friday, September 6, 2019 - 09:22

Yesterday saw the unveiling of 10 Bayside Headteachers portrait paintings at the GEMA Gallery situated in Line Wall Road.

The paintings are to be put on display at the halls of the new Bayside school and the concept behind this is bringing something from the old Bayside, with decades worth of history, to the new Bayside in Waterport.

Headteacher Michael Tavares was delighted to present the paintings made by the very talented Bayside artists which will be seen by many future generations in the many years to come.

Liam Baldachino, who is studying architecture and also painted previous Bayside Headteacher, Colin Skinner said, “Honour to say the least, like, seeing the level of the other artists and I’ve been chosen to have my painting get hung up alongside theirs. The idea was stemmed from my art teacher, Peter Parody, and he wanted to take Bayside’s legacy into the new Bayside School, and his idea was to get all the headmasters and that developed into the idea to getting a student from each headmaster’s reign of Bayside, and they painted their headmaster. I painted Colin Skinner and all the headmasters were onboard with the idea straight away. The painting took about 20 hours, split up between 3 large segments of painting.”

Tommy Bell-Jones, who is studying animation at University, painted current Bayside headteacher, Michael Tavares and said, “It is a massive honour to be able to contribute to the legacy of Bayside in this way. If I grow up here and if I have my kids, they’ll be coming to Bayside and I can point at this painting and say, ‘I did that!’ and it would still be there. I’m really into story telling – in any sort of art medium: music, photography, animation, art, painting, whatever. I’m really happy. There was a big worry when I went to Uni, I didn’t paint for a year. I had done the majority of it but it still needed work, so coming back [to Gib] I hadn’t touched a paintbrush and I had to sort of do this piece under a lot of pressure. I’m very happy with the way it came out.”

“We want to take this with us so every time we go into school in the mornings we will remember our headteachers and of course we will be able to explain to the younger ones who are not fortunate enough to have all these special people as their headteachers, who these people are,” said current Bayside headteacher, Michael Tavares.

Peter Parody, art teacher of Bayside, was the one who came up with the idea of painting the many headteachers Bayside has been privileged to have teach over the years. He said, “It really is quite amazing. I’ve always been quite a demanding teacher with my students, perhaps this is part of the result. So what I tried to do is also in some way link them, so Headteachers have been painted by students who were in the school at the time. This is our legacy and this is what we bring from Bayside into the new Bayside. Overall I think this is a celebration of education, 47 years of education. Education is a beautiful profession, it is the privilege of my life, I think this particular project is something I will never forget and I am grateful to everybody who has participated.”

Minister of Heritage and Education, John Cortes said., “In the same way as all these men have had influence on my life, they have had influence in virtually every household in Gibraltar for the last 50 or so years. They have been the leaders of the teaching teams and are very under recognised, and they have influence on each and every one of us, and so this is a really fitting tribute to them and to Bayside School. You’re absolutely right, this takes the old Bayside into the new one. I am minister of Heritage and this is Gibraltar’s Heritage. It’s a legacy, it’s a tribute to the work that them and their teams have done through the decades and it ensures that the legacy we are creating together in the new schools, carries on into the future. Congratulations to you, the artists, to all the teachers who have worked in those schools through these many 50 years, and to those of us who were students there, this is a celebration.”